In computing, an application platform refers to a framework, either in hardware or software, which allows software to run. Typical platforms include a computer's architecture, an operating system, or programming languages and their runtime libraries. Thus, some examples of application platforms can include operating systems such as MICROSOFT® WINDOWS® or Linux, or runtime platforms such as MICROSOFT® .NET Framework and Java. It is common for an application platform to have data or resources that are private to the application platform. In such scenarios, if another application wants to use that same data, the application first has to communicate with the application platform to request the data, and then has to wait for the application platform to respond to the request.
An example of data that may be private to an application platform includes thread local storage. Thread local storage is a technique by which an operating system allows each thread to have its own private storage area for data. Access to the data for a given thread that is stored in the private storage area has to be performed through the operating system. This has a negative impact on the performance of the application that is using the thread local storage.